"Woodsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the swamp, and I knew the rabbit had run to hole. For half an hour or more I heard the hunters at work there, digging their game out; then they came along and discovered me at my work. They proved to be an old trapper and woodsman and his son. I told them what I was in quest of. "A mountain weasel," said the old man. "Seven or eight years ago I used to set deadfalls for rabbits just over there, and the game was always partly eaten up. It must have been this weasel that visited my traps." So my game was evidently ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... endure the passages of political philosophy in the sure hope of a prettier page to come. Everybody, too, can enjoy the love music, the hammer and anvil music, the clumping of the giants, the tune of the young woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon music and nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion of simple melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short, the vast extent of ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... folk than the Rands," said the woodsman. "I've never known one to let go, once he had man or beast by the throat! Silent and holdfast and deadly to anger—that's the Rands. If Gideon wants tobacco and you want learning, there'll be ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... on the warm ridge, thinking of many things that the woodsman's appearance had stirred up in her. She knew nothing of her early life, and had never felt any curiosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to explore the corner of her memory where certain blurred images lingered. But all that had happened to her within the last few weeks had stirred ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... a saying that he could scent game so well that he never needed a dog; and that he could imitate to perfection the call of every game bird that inhabited the mountain glens. Sweet-tempered he was not; but so reliable, skilful, and vigilant, and moreover so thorough a woodsman, that the boys could well afford to put ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this year," said Francois. "It was the spring frosts that killed the blossoms." He brought to the berry-seeking his woodsman's knowledge. "In the hollows and among the alders the snow was lying longer and ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Jolliet says it is not always that we may light a camp-fire," said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder with the flint and steel which a woodsman carried everywhere. ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the soft dusk, which wrapped him like a mother's arms, he poled noiselessly down stream, secured the punt, dressed his fish with the dexterity of a practised woodsman, and washing them neatly in the river, waded back to his camp. Again the root handle was lifted, the alcohol lamp filled and lighted, and while the coffee boiled over that, the fish, laid on the slices of bacon, were set to sizzle comfortably over a tiny ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... do confess that I'm as much surprised almost as I am pleased," replied Malachi. "It is really a great feat for a lad to accomplish all by himself, and I am proud of him for having done it; but from the first I saw what a capital woodsman he would make, and he has ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... was another king of the same size near to the opposite precipice, which he felled in the same way. Both monarchs mingled and severely injured their royal heads in the middle of the pass, which thus became entirely blocked up, for our woodsman had so managed that the trees fell right ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n Dick rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the way you go about it: First, you take a large and healthy woodsman with an axe, who cuts down a tree—a substantial tree. Because this is the frame of your bed. But on no account do this yourself. One of the joys of a bough bed is seeing somebody else ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... jumping-off place of civilization, Mariposa, whence we were to start our pack-mules into the wilderness. Let me recommend tourists like ourselves to include in the former catalogue plenty of canned fruits, sardines, and apple-butter,—in the latter, a jug of sirup for the inevitable camp slapjacks. No woodsman, as will presently appear in our narrative, can tell when a slapjack may be the last plank between him and starvation; and to this plank how powerfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... ways," she confessed wearily, "but none of 'em seemed to work. First I thought of hidin' it up near Pine Ridge, but I was afraid some woodsman might happen on it; then I started to take it down to the river in our wagon; but Elias Barnes would get in an' light his pipe, and I was so afraid a spark from ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... out into the wilderness, should not be unmindful of the swarms of blood-thirsty flies, gnats and mosquitoes, which infest the woods in the summer and early autumn, and are there lying in wait for him. These often become a source of great annoyance to the woodsman, and more often a source of positive ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... apparently above Bangor, at or near Passadumkeag. Here the party found a stockade enclosure fourteen feet high, seventy yards long, and fifty yards wide, containing twenty-three houses, which Westbrook, a better woodsman than grammarian, reports to have been "built regular." Outside the stockade stood the chapel, "well and handsomely furnished within and without, and on the south side of that the Fryer's dwelling-house."[263] This "Fryer" was Father Lauverjat, who had led his flock ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... bowed gravely. "Thank you, monsieur. I have not been blind to the way you have spared me hardship, but when I said that I would do whatever you would teach me, I meant it. I think that I shall make a good woodsman in time." ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the sun peeped over the tree-tops far away down river. The party soon after divided, I keeping with a section which was led by Bento, the Ega carpenter, a capital woodsman. After a short walk we struck the banks of a beautiful little lake, having grassy margins and clear dark water, on the surface of which floated thick beds of water-lilies. We then crossed a muddy creek or watercourse that entered the lake, and then found ourselves on a ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... made, leading up from the river tilt and along the creek which flowed from the first lake, was plainly marked; and they proceeded with the long, swinging stride characteristic of the woodsman, rapidly and without a halt, to the point where the trail entered the lake. Here a wide circuit around the lake shore was necessary, and it was nearly noon when they fell again into the trail at the farther end and came upon the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... storehouse, at hand; all placed near the spring, and beneath the shade of a magnificent elm. In the storehouse he kept his barrel of flour, his barrel of salt, a stock of smoked or dried meat, and that which the woodsman, if accustomed in early life to the settlements, prizes most highly, a half-barrel of pickled pork. The bark canoe had sufficed to transport all these stores, merely ballasting handsomely that ticklish craft; and its owner relied on the honey to perform the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... mountains and skin twenty of an evening," he said. "Ye'll make a woodsman sure. You've got the eye, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the anvil, the lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvest-home, are sweeter music than pans of departed glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad cottage of the hillside, the cabin of the woodsman, and the rural home of the farmer are the true citadels of any country. There is a dignity in honest toil which belongs not to the display of wealth or the luxury of fashion. The man who drives the plough, or swings his ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... vigilance and silence. No one could say when danger might suddenly present itself. Frequently he recalled the escape he had had through the shot which James Boone in the preceding year had fired at the panther crouching above his head. This always impressed the young woodsman afresh with the need of continual care. Nevertheless he enjoyed the conversation of the men with whom he was walking, ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... all men, saving Sylla,[441] the man-slayer, Who passes for in life and death most lucky, Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,[442] Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere; For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... my mind the story of the king, who, after the chase, took some bread and water at the hut of a woodsman; which, as it is no doubt well known, I shall not repeat unto you. But the bottom of the basket begins to appear. What! done already? Good despatch! And now, scholar, we will immediately to our sport, for we have no ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... y'r old peaks have a nip in the air at three in the mornin'!" Matthews came down to the raft chaffing his hands. "That's a job worthy a woodsman," he observed, holding the halter reins while the Ranger got ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... assailed by two ruffians, while other two made towards my sister and Gregory. The poor knave fled, crying for help, pursued by my false kinsman, now your prisoner; and the designs of the other on my poor Emma (murderous no doubt) were prevented by the sudden apparition of a brave woodsman, who, after a short encounter, stretched the miscreant at his feet and came to my assistance. I was already slightly wounded, and nearly overlaid with odds. The combat lasted some time, for the caitiffs were both well armed, strong, and desperate; at length, however, we had ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... woodsman, in the clearing stood, Hemmed by the solemn forest stretching round; Stalwart, ungainly, honest-eyed and rude, The genius of that solitude profound. He clove the way that future millions trod, He passed, unmoved by worldly ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of poplar logs, hewed and dovetailed at the corners with the skill of the Ontario woodsman. It was about twelve by sixteen feet in size, with collar-beams eight feet from the floor. The roof was of two thicknesses of elm boards, with tar-paper between. The floor was of poplar boards. The door was in ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... seas of North America aroused the greatest interest, even awe, among the earlier explorers, and there was not one among the five who did not look with eager eyes upon the ocean of waters. They were better informed, too, than the average woodsman concerning the size and shape ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the feeding cows, and soon were lost to sight in the woods that fringed the line of settlement on both sides of the valley, and farther on widened into the great forest that was traversed only by the woodsman and ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... In Scotland mourns as "wede away;" Sore wounded, Sybil's Cross he spied, And dragged him to its foot, and died, Close by the noble Marmion's side. The spoilers stripped and gashed the slain, And thus their corpses were mista'en; And thus, in the proud baron's tomb, The lowly woodsman ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on the door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake. He lit the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially dressed over ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... years the Tahitians had had these upaupahuras. Their national ballads, the achievements of the warrior, the fisherman, the woodsman, the canoe-builder, and the artist, had been orally recorded and impressed in this manner in the conclaves of the Arioi. Dancing is for prose gesture what song is for the instinctive exclamation of feeling, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in South Carolina, and entered into the struggle against the British with the utmost enthusiasm. He was a brave man, a hard fighter, and one of the most active of those who took up arms against the King. He was an expert woodsman, and was at home in the saddle. He was assigned to duty as a scout, and was better equipped for that service, perhaps, than any man in the American army. The ease with which he secured information of the enemy's ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... away," said poor Phoebe, "and do not stand gazing on him thus;" for the woodsman, resting on his fatal weapon, stood looking down on the corpse with the appearance of a man half stunned ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... ground. Riding along the trail through the pines appeared a young man. He was evidently not at home in the forest, as he peered anxiously through every opening. His dress and bearing indicated that he was not a woodsman nor a herder of cattle. Pausing on a knoll, he surveyed the scene around him, and took off his hat that the evening breeze might cool his face. Suddenly, there came echoing through the forest, from hill to hill, the deep notes of the lur. The traveler listened, and then ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... structure. It showed signs of having been inhabited up to a month previous. The woodsman shook his head in uncertain amazement, and again consulted his map. Ten miles father east, on the north shore of Beaver Lake, lived ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... beer barrel. The thirty-three millions a year" (which was the revenue in 1877 derived from "complicity with distillers and brewers"), "are to every Ministry like the proverbial wolf which the woodsman holds by the ears. To keep him is difficult, to let him go is dangerous. Their position is becoming worse than embarrassing when the best men of every class, and all the women who see the public miseries, condemn the deadly policy of bartering national morality for payments to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the mountains the incident might have passed unnoticed. By this time Tad Butler was a pretty keen woodsman as well as plainsman. He had learned to take notice of everything. Even the most trivial signs hold a meaning all their own for the man who ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... possible that the people had moved, or the road been changed; and yet I was sure of my direction. I went on with an energy increased by the ridiculousness of the situation, the danger that an experienced woodsman was in of getting home late for supper; the lateness of the meal being nothing to the gibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, and how far I went on, I do not know; but suddenly I stumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... accomplished if the cave had been unoccupied. Without incident they came down into a hollow through which trickled a small stream, its banks laced with a thin edging of ice. Under Ashe's direction Ross collected an armload of firewood. He was no woodsman and his prolonged exposure to the chilling drizzle made him eager for even the very rough shelter of a cave, so eager that he plunged forward carelessly. His foot came down on a slippery patch of mud, sending ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here was work demanding attention. Without a pause for breath or congratulation they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was moving at last. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... you that at this time nearly all the country west of the mountains was a wild and unknown region. In fact, all the western part of Virginia was an unbroken wilderness, with only here and there a hunter's camp or the solitary hut of some daring woodsman. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... nodded his head for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life itself—as it stood triumphing over decades ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... appearance of this individual betokened the hunter, but at the same time one who followed it for pleasure, rather than as a means of support. This was evident from his dress, which although somewhat characteristic of the time, was much superior to that generally worn by the woodsman. He had on a woolen hunting frock, of fine texture, of a dark green color, that came a few inches below the hips. Beneath this, and fitting closely around his shoulders, neck and breast, was a scarlet ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... in the West were over, Roosevelt's fight for health had achieved its purpose. Bill Sewall, the woodsman who had introduced the young Roosevelt to the life of the out-of-doors in Maine, and who afterward went out West with him to take up the cattle business, offers this testimony: "He went to Dakota a frail young man, suffering from asthma and stomach ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... "Wait but till I have changed this gray gown for a green cassock, and if I make not a quarter-staff ring twelve upon thy pate, I am neither true clerk nor good woodsman." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... shoulders just then. He waited for his ball, had a strike called, and then connected. The sound of that blow would never be forgotten by those eager Scranton fans. It was as loud and clear as the stroke of a woodsman's ax on a hollow tree. And they saw the ball speeding away out dead ahead. Everybody started up again to watch its course, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... refreshing shadows, a soft carpet of pine-needles through which the faint furrow of the trail runs as over velvet. And then, last of all, in a wide opening, clear as though chopped and plowed by some back-woodsman, a park of grass, fresh grass, green ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the depths of the snowing night she strode along, a weird figure against the eerie whiteness that illumined the winter world. She felt a strange wild thrill in the infinite out-of-doors. The woodsman's blood of her father was having its ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of his motions; perhaps it lay even in a certain dimness and obscurity of outline, framed by the thickets as he was, that was particularly characteristic of the wild denizens of the woods. But even in the heavy shadows his identity was clear at once. He was simply a woodsman,—and he held his horse by ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... was truly uncouth; which was not a little increased by the absence on one side of the brim, and by a loose fragment of it hanging down on the other. To give something martial to an appearance in other respects so outlandish and ludicrous, he had his rifle, and other usual equipments of a woodsman, including the knife and tomahawk, the first of which he carried in his hand, swinging it about at every moment, with a vigour and apparent carelessness well fitted to discompose a nervous person, had any such happened among his auditors. As ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... quitting Ravensnest, consisted of Dirck and myself, Guert, Mr. Traverse, the surveyor, three chain-bearers, Jaap or Yaap, Guert's man, Pete, and one woodsman or hunter. This would have given us ten vigorous and well-armed men, for our whole force. It was thought best, however, to add two Indians to our number, in the double character of hunters and runners, or ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... understand how Skipper Zeb could know where to look for the particular hackmatack tree, standing alone among the spruces and quaking aspens, for at several points he saw lone hackmatacks in similar surroundings. Presently he was to learn that the woodsman by long practice learns to know every tree or bush that is even slightly out of the ordinary along his trail, and so trained is he in the art of observation that his subconscious mind records these with no effort ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, negroes, Indians, and Americans contribute to the motley contingent. They come from every direction and from various distances, some of them traveling a hundred miles or more to secure a few days' or weeks' work. Almost every farmer or woodsman living anywhere in the region of the marshes turns out with his entire family; and the families of all the laboring men and mechanics of the surrounding towns and cities join in the general hegira to the bogs, and help to harvest the fruit. Those living within a few miles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... took the woodsman's brown wrist tenderly into both his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, "He gave His, first. He started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse." The voice rose—"I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated 'St. Pierre!' ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Springs, in Lafayette county, Missouri, lived Mr. Duncan, a sturdy woodsman, who emigrated thither with his father, while the Mississippi valley was still a wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts, or the still more savage Indians. His grandfather was an eastern man; but had bared his brawny arm on many a battle field, and had earned the right to as many ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... woodsman can read what would be an unintelligible jumble of facts to a city man. Here on one trip we found a tree. Its top was smitten off and removed a distance of forty to fifty feet. Parts of the tree were scattered for a distance of two hundred yards. What caused it? ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James |
